It's late one Friday, the dancehall's makeshift. Outside there's snow, and a long old war. Piano notes and cigarettes thicken the air like the hundred soldiers in their damp uniforms, like the perfumed shopgirls in flowery dresses throwing back their heads to bite at the night with their lipsticked laughs and their feverish eyes. A young lieutenant leans into the fug, rolling a glass between his palms and staring at the room's far edge, where a captain sits. I watch the lieutenant as he crosses the floor to stand wordlessly beside the captain's table, and reach for his hand and pull him into his arms and without ever speaking the men begin to dance. And yes, at first the other dancers gawp, but soon the hardest of us stand aside as if the sudden beauty of these men has somehow wiped the meanness from our lips. Then the orchestra dissolves, with all the onlookers, and a new private music beyond my range seems to move the soldiers, unhurried and turning. The lieutenant's chin on the rough serge of his captain's shoulder, the captain's whiskered cheek rests against his partner's.
What do You think about Queermance Anthology, Volume 1?
